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Topic: bunjin ponderosa (Read 12000 times)

Hello all, this is my first post here - been away from the forums for 3 years, but I'm getting back into things now. Looks like you guys & gals have a nice forum here.

This is my bunjin ponderosa that I will be exhibiting this weekend. It was collected in the fall of 2006, I purchased it before it had even been potted up, fresh from the collecting trip, from Randy and Jason at Oregon Bonsai.

I started working on it is 2008. What do you think? It's still a few years from being "done." I need to work on the tertiary branching. But it's well on it's way, I think.

The Pot is from Sara Rayner. http://www.redwing.net/~daalms/ This was one she happened to have in stock, but she will also custom make a pot to fit your tree exactly. In a few more years, when the top is more "finished" I will probably have her make me a similar pot, but in more of a bowl shape. The accent pot is one of hers as well.

I think I've mostly been lucky with the needle reduction :-) First I removed all the needles that were 3 years old or older, starting about 2 years ago. Then I removed the 1 and 2 year old needles on the tops and bottom of the branches. Then I removed the terminal buds from the end of each branch. The current needles are the new bunch that grew after that. Once each bunch was well established I removed all the rest of the old needles. That would have been last summer. I don't know if they will stay that small or not - we'll have to see how they grow through this year.

Hi Bob,Like the trunk a lot. I will be interested to see if it maintains the nice short foliage that you have attained as well, and still increase in density and remain healthy. Boon has convinced me over the past few years to start treating them like white pines- no fertilizer until late in the season (I start in August or September) and then allowing the branch density to grow to a point that it causes the needles and buds to shorten (short internodes as well). Nice work.

The Pot is from Sara Rayner. http://www.redwing.net/~daalms/ This was one she happened to have in stock, but she will also custom make a pot to fit your tree exactly. In a few more years, when the top is more "finished" I will probably have her make me a similar pot, but in more of a bowl shape. The accent pot is one of hers as well.

I think I've mostly been lucky with the needle reduction :-) First I removed all the needles that were 3 years old or older, starting about 2 years ago. Then I removed the 1 and 2 year old needles on the tops and bottom of the branches. Then I removed the terminal buds from the end of each branch. The current needles are the new bunch that grew after that. Once each bunch was well established I removed all the rest of the old needles. That would have been last summer. I don't know if they will stay that small or not - we'll have to see how they grow through this year.

- bob

Very nice ponderosa and pot! I've got a ponderosa in bunjin form that I picked up from Oregon Bonsai last year that is somewhat similar. My current needles are very long though, so I'm curious - when did you do the needle removal? I've got Larry Jackel's book, but it's always good to hear from others as to what they are doing successfully.

Last year I fertilized my ponderosas throughout the growing season to get them strong - results were very long needles, up to 4" or more in many cases. This year I think I'm going to take John's approach and fertilize them later in the season.

OK, so after a little detective work, i believe that i started removing 2 - 3 year old needles in the summer of 2008. In July or August I removed the terminal growth at each branch, as well as the top and bottom clusters of the 1-2 year old needles, leaving the side needle clusters. That winter I moved it from the grow box to the first round pot. I didn't do much in the way of root pruning.

Then in the spring of 2009, after there was good active growth on new clusters I removed the rest of the old needles. So all the needles you see now are new since the summer of 2008.

In the summer of 2009 I did the initial wiring of the top, fine tuned that a little in the fall, then wired the rest of the way out to each cluster last week.

Wrt the short needles you may have gotten some lucky genes on your side. Andy Smith has a picture on his website of two ponderosa seedlings growing next to each other, one with the typical long needles and the other with much shorter needles. He didn't know the reason definitively but speculated genetics.

Bob, Larry's book is a nice species compilation with some very good information, if you cutmy short contribution out (jokingly said). Larry put a lot of his hard earned experience and knowledge into it. The additional contributions should give you a good sense of how to adapt his high mountain climate growing information to your locale.